How Far Should We Go to Facilitate Non-standard Deals?
How far should we go to facilitate non-standard deals? The variance arose because things have changed over time, and because we try to be agile in ...
Kamile Valatkaite is a senior legal counsel with Vinted – the company that is promoting sustainable consumption by providing a marketplace for selling and buying second-hand items, mainly clothing.
Kamile’s presentation was about the particular challenges faced by a legal team supporting a fast-growing company. Within two years, the legal team grew from 2 to 40 people. At first, two people had to cover everything, but the team’s growth allowed them to build structures and responsibilities – Kamile’s org chart would look familiar to the legal team in many large organizations. Kamile says she is “a huge legal design advocate”.
In a start-up environment, Kamile says, changes come quickly and often, making it hard to plan. They have to adapt to business needs, and if they embark on innovation projects, they have to find additional hours to do the work.
Kamile focussed on projects for the contracts team. They had been using various software tools to help them, until they recognized that the tools had inadequate access controls, and were starting to look risky, and they felt the security posture of the tools was insufficient. They needed a solution that allowed them to implement proper controls.
A new business requirement caused a sudden and significant increase in B2B contracts. The higher volume of contracts created the opportunity and need to move to adopt templates for more of their contracts.
Legito offered a platform that could help the team adapt to the changing requirements while having the controls, templates, and other tools to drive efficiency.
Kamile Valatkaite is a senior legal counsel with Vinted – the company that is promoting sustainable consumption by providing a marketplace for selling and buying second-hand items, mainly clothing.
Kamile’s presentation was about the particular challenges faced by a legal team supporting a fast-growing company. Within two years, the legal team grew from 2 to 40 people. At first, two people had to cover everything, but the team’s growth allowed them to build structures and responsibilities – Kamile’s org chart would look familiar to the legal team in many large organizations. Kamile says she is “a huge legal design advocate”.
In a start-up environment, Kamile says, changes come quickly and often, making it hard to plan. They have to adapt to business needs, and if they embark on innovation projects, they have to find additional hours to do the work.
Kamile focussed on projects for the contracts team. They had been using various software tools to help them, until they recognized that the tools had inadequate access controls, and were starting to look risky, and they felt the security posture of the tools was insufficient. They needed a solution that allowed them to implement proper controls.
A new business requirement caused a sudden and significant increase in B2B contracts. The higher volume of contracts created the opportunity and need to move to adopt templates for more of their contracts.
Legito offered a platform that could help the team adapt to the changing requirements while having the controls, templates, and other tools to drive efficiency.
This panel discussion featured insights from Paul Handal (Head of Legal Tech at a large law firm), Filip Ivanov (a consultant helping organisations to implement legal tech), Teodora Bobcheva (general counsel in a corporate legal team) and Jarmila Hanzalova (head of knowledge management at a law firm).
This contribution from one of the panel members perhaps explains why some organisations often live with sub-optimal results without searching for a solution: too many people assume things cannot be made better because the common experience is that some legal procedures aways seem to take an onerous route.
It took the outside stimulus and experience of a consultant to demonstrate the effectiveness of using a solution like Legito.
Jarmila’s law firm reported a more unusual route to deploying Legito: they began with client-facing projects and then decided they should use Legito internally to augment the law firms internal processes.
Teodora commented on the benefits of deploying Legito (from her perspective within a corporate legal team):
Paul (who also lectures on legal tech) observed that using Legito to digitise each step of a process inevitably made it easier to automate each successive step – the benefits accumulate as you move through a process.
The panel also discussed tips for successful deployments:
Teodora added two poignant observations about using Legito:
We thank the contributors for their time and insights.
This panel discussion featured insights from Paul Handal (Head of Legal Tech at a large law firm), Filip Ivanov (a consultant helping organisations to implement legal tech), Teodora Bobcheva (general counsel in a corporate legal team) and Jarmila Hanzalova (head of knowledge management at a law firm).
This contribution from one of the panel members perhaps explains why some organisations often live with sub-optimal results without searching for a solution: too many people assume things cannot be made better because the common experience is that some legal procedures aways seem to take an onerous route.
It took the outside stimulus and experience of a consultant to demonstrate the effectiveness of using a solution like Legito.
Jarmila’s law firm reported a more unusual route to deploying Legito: they began with client-facing projects and then decided they should use Legito internally to augment the law firms internal processes.
Teodora commented on the benefits of deploying Legito (from her perspective within a corporate legal team):
Paul (who also lectures on legal tech) observed that using Legito to digitise each step of a process inevitably made it easier to automate each successive step – the benefits accumulate as you move through a process.
The panel also discussed tips for successful deployments:
Teodora added two poignant observations about using Legito:
We thank the contributors for their time and insights.
If we are tempted to assume there is one solution to a problem, get fresh ideas by looking at the problem through the eyes of another culture, another country, or another continent.
Mauricio Jaramillo presented a case study from the largest law firm in Colombia, Gomez-Pinzon. Here’s a deliberate summary of a few sections from Mauricio’s presentation that are not what we usually hear from law firm case studies.
Mauricio described the core challenge like this: how do you persuade the partners of a successful law firm to embark on a digital transformation project to change legal services that had been working successfully for 30+ years? Gomez-Pinzon acknowledged that they did not merely intend to change the way they created documents – they were going to redesign legal practice.
Before deciding the projects to deliver digital transformation, Gomez-Pinzon started by changing how people would respond and adapt. It helped that their organisation attracted young legal professionals keen to build their careers using new technologies. Gomez-Pinzon spent time thinking about how to get people to change the way they thought about their work. Mauricio believed the success of digital transformation would depend on how people embraced it. After they got their colleagues behind the project, they could leave them to continue to build on each new technical innovation so that it did not stall after one project.
Gomez-Pinzon kicked off their document automation strategy with a remarkable project: Mauricio observed that auditors regularly ask law firms to report on legal matters for use in clients’ audits. When he explained the cumbersome procedures for responding to audit requests, the problem was visible, and it raises the question, why has nobody found a better way to handle it? It’s an ideal starting project: it solves a problem that is a recurring administrative nuisance that must be done correctly, and it’s a problem that vexed every team in the organisation. Get that right (and they did), and you open the door to enterprise-wide adoption of the technology for multiple teams.
Having successfully built a solution for audit reports, Mauricio described how Gomez-Pinzon moved to another solution that lawyers will recognise: they automated the production of due-diligence reports. If you’re a lawyer, you will know that DD reports are a joyless but important task in every corporate deal. If you’re not a lawyer, the interesting thing about automating DD reports is that they are not ‘standard’ – an automation solution has to span many variables because the reports cannot be over-simplified.
We thank Mauricio for travelling to Prague to share his experience. They started thinking about people. They built a solution that automated a task that was tedious for people, but a task that must be done correctly. That’s how they began a successful digital transformation.
FULL RECORDING NOW AVAILABLE
Legito's Chief Community Officer
After a few years of working for a prominent London law firm, I started to get comfortable in my practice area, and I stopped feeling like every project demanded knowledge I didn’t have. And then something happened: I travelled overseas to work on a legal project in the middle east.
I started to work in the same way I worked in London – and it didn’t go too well.
I remember a senior lawyer in a local firm making arguments I had not heard before, and using negotiations in a style I had not experienced. I annoyed my counterparts by trying to do things the way they were done in London, and made no progress until I let go my narrow outlook.
In the years that followed, I was fortunate to work in multiple countries and to spend long periods in some of them. I started to enjoy the experience of different business cultures and legal traditions while observing that we share many of the same challenges.
If we are tempted to assume there is one solution to a problem, get fresh ideas by looking at the problem through the eyes of another culture, another country, or another continent.
Mauricio Jaramillo presented a case study from the largest law firm in Colombia, Gomez-Pinzon. Here’s a deliberate summary of a few sections from Mauricio’s presentation that are not what we usually hear from law firm case studies.
Mauricio described the core challenge like this: how do you persuade the partners of a successful law firm to embark on a digital transformation project to change legal services that had been working successfully for 30+ years? Gomez-Pinzon acknowledged that they did not merely intend to change the way they created documents – they were going to redesign legal practice.
Before deciding the projects to deliver digital transformation, Gomez-Pinzon started by changing how people would respond and adapt. It helped that their organisation attracted young legal professionals keen to build their careers using new technologies. Gomez-Pinzon spent time thinking about how to get people to change the way they thought about their work. Mauricio believed the success of digital transformation would depend on how people embraced it. After they got their colleagues behind the project, they could leave them to continue to build on each new technical innovation so that it did not stall after one project.
Gomez-Pinzon kicked off their document automation strategy with a remarkable project: Mauricio observed that auditors regularly ask law firms to report on legal matters for use in clients’ audits. When he explained the cumbersome procedures for responding to audit requests, the problem was visible, and it raises the question, why has nobody found a better way to handle it? It’s an ideal starting project: it solves a problem that is a recurring administrative nuisance that must be done correctly, and it’s a problem that vexed every team in the organisation. Get that right (and they did), and you open the door to enterprise-wide adoption of the technology for multiple teams.
Having successfully built a solution for audit reports, Mauricio described how Gomez-Pinzon moved to another solution that lawyers will recognise: they automated the production of due-diligence reports. If you’re a lawyer, you will know that DD reports are a joyless but important task in every corporate deal. If you’re not a lawyer, the interesting thing about automating DD reports is that they are not ‘standard’ – an automation solution has to span many variables because the reports cannot be over-simplified.
We thank Mauricio for travelling to Prague to share his experience. They started thinking about people. They built a solution that automated a task that was tedious for people, but a task that must be done correctly. That’s how they began a successful digital transformation.
FULL RECORDING NOW AVAILABLE
Legito's Chief Community Officer
After a few years of working for a prominent London law firm, I started to get comfortable in my practice area, and I stopped feeling like every project demanded knowledge I didn’t have. And then something happened: I travelled overseas to work on a legal project in the middle east.
I started to work in the same way I worked in London – and it didn’t go too well.
I remember a senior lawyer in a local firm making arguments I had not heard before, and using negotiations in a style I had not experienced. I annoyed my counterparts by trying to do things the way they were done in London, and made no progress until I let go my narrow outlook.
In the years that followed, I was fortunate to work in multiple countries and to spend long periods in some of them. I started to enjoy the experience of different business cultures and legal traditions while observing that we share many of the same challenges.
Mar 30 · 2 min read
Mar 30 · 2 min read
Organisations need leverage to grow, and so do people. Like it or not, some organisations use contracts to exert leverage. If you’re a smaller organisation trading with a Fortune 100 company, you probably don’t like it.
The child’s seesaw is a graphic often used to portray power between two organisations because it’s a visual representation of leverage.
The SME has to work pretty hard to balance the seesaw when faced with the typical contract demands of a big corporate. But, notice something else: this image shows the seesaw evenly balanced, but did you ever try to keep a seesaw in perfect balance? It’s hard. Each side is up or down – it’s unlikely that it stayed evenly balanced or stationery at some odd angle.
If you’re not careful, that’s how it is with contracts too.
Until that day comes, how do you get leverage in contract negotiations?
Those contracts they issued were drafted by lawyers who knew nothing about your deal, your product, or the business need. They are necessarily generic and high-level. You have two opportunities:
Feel free to ignore outdated and badly regarded market norms – like archaic language, or lengthy redundant text added by lawyers lacking confidence to know what’s important. Recognise the market norms that speak to your industry’s custom and practice, and the application of regulations and compliance that prevail in many sectors. If your contracts don’t look like they belong in your market, don’t be surprised if Big Corp insists on using a contract that does. Get some leverage by using contracts that meet expectations.
Legislation changes. Use your agility to stay up to date, and look credible. Big Corp might be slower. Expose the gaps to get some leverage.
Of course, Big Corp legal teams are free to use the same techniques, and then maybe contracts will be less hard work for everyone.
Organisations need leverage to grow, and so do people. Like it or not, some organisations use contracts to exert leverage. If you’re a smaller organisation trading with a Fortune 100 company, you probably don’t like it.
The child’s seesaw is a graphic often used to portray power between two organisations because it’s a visual representation of leverage.
The SME has to work pretty hard to balance the seesaw when faced with the typical contract demands of a big corporate. But, notice something else: this image shows the seesaw evenly balanced, but did you ever try to keep a seesaw in perfect balance? It’s hard. Each side is up or down – it’s unlikely that it stayed evenly balanced or stationery at some odd angle.
If you’re not careful, that’s how it is with contracts too.
Until that day comes, how do you get leverage in contract negotiations?
Those contracts they issued were drafted by lawyers who knew nothing about your deal, your product, or the business need. They are necessarily generic and high-level. You have two opportunities:
Feel free to ignore outdated and badly regarded market norms – like archaic language, or lengthy redundant text added by lawyers lacking confidence to know what’s important. Recognise the market norms that speak to your industry’s custom and practice, and the application of regulations and compliance that prevail in many sectors. If your contracts don’t look like they belong in your market, don’t be surprised if Big Corp insists on using a contract that does. Get some leverage by using contracts that meet expectations.
Legislation changes. Use your agility to stay up to date, and look credible. Big Corp might be slower. Expose the gaps to get some leverage.
Of course, Big Corp legal teams are free to use the same techniques, and then maybe contracts will be less hard work for everyone.
More Weekly Articles
What does good look like?
What does good look like?
Legito isn’t just for contracts or legal teams, but today we look at best practices in contracts and contract management.
Are your contracts reasonable, or are you using contracts as a big disclaimer? If you received the same terms, would you be happy to sign them? Sure, be legally prudent – but don’t use a contract to avoid all responsibility.
Do your contracts say anything useful about what you are selling? Do they set clear expectations and describe steps that actually happen? Or, have you adopted some generic form that could just as easily apply to a different organisation? In short, are they useable?
Do your contracts look like they were drafted by a law clerk in the office of Charles Dickens? Are they full of archaic phrases and redundant ‘filler text’? Did the author create them by cutting and pasting from some crusty old text? For a candid appraisal of the disfunction in contract drafting, look up Ken Adams.
You want your customers to feel like you know your business, right? You want to look organised, consistent, and ready to deliver. Why, then, would you have a contract process that never flows the same way on any two deals and, worse, depends on the organising skills of an overworked contracts team? If you’re consistent and slick, it makes it easier for stakeholders to work with you.
Consistent and slick doesn’t mean inflexible and limited. Leave space for humans to do what humans do best, but give them tools to help them stay on top of the tedious tasks. Add only the controls that you need – it’s really hard to impose contracts and processes on customers unless you enjoy a monopoly in a market where customers want what you have.
Does your process recognise the reality in your customer’s world? Have you made it easy for customers to complete their procurement process? You know it’s coming, so anticipate it.
There will always be difficult customers who make it hard to get deals done. I’m not suggesting your contracts should appease the most unreasonable customers. But, if you regularly get the same old issues delaying deals from normal customers, it’s time to evolve.
There are at least three options to avoid history repeating itself:
Legito isn’t just for contracts or legal teams, but today we look at best practices in contracts and contract management.
Are your contracts reasonable, or are you using contracts as a big disclaimer? If you received the same terms, would you be happy to sign them? Sure, be legally prudent – but don’t use a contract to avoid all responsibility.
Do your contracts say anything useful about what you are selling? Do they set clear expectations and describe steps that actually happen? Or, have you adopted some generic form that could just as easily apply to a different organisation? In short, are they useable?
Do your contracts look like they were drafted by a law clerk in the office of Charles Dickens? Are they full of archaic phrases and redundant ‘filler text’? Did the author create them by cutting and pasting from some crusty old text? For a candid appraisal of the disfunction in contract drafting, look up Ken Adams.
You want your customers to feel like you know your business, right? You want to look organised, consistent, and ready to deliver. Why, then, would you have a contract process that never flows the same way on any two deals and, worse, depends on the organising skills of an overworked contracts team? If you’re consistent and slick, it makes it easier for stakeholders to work with you.
Consistent and slick doesn’t mean inflexible and limited. Leave space for humans to do what humans do best, but give them tools to help them stay on top of the tedious tasks. Add only the controls that you need – it’s really hard to impose contracts and processes on customers unless you enjoy a monopoly in a market where customers want what you have.
Does your process recognise the reality in your customer’s world? Have you made it easy for customers to complete their procurement process? You know it’s coming, so anticipate it.
There will always be difficult customers who make it hard to get deals done. I’m not suggesting your contracts should appease the most unreasonable customers. But, if you regularly get the same old issues delaying deals from normal customers, it’s time to evolve.
There are at least three options to avoid history repeating itself:
More Weekly Articles